AJN, American Journal of Nursing

Source:

AJN, American Journal of Nursing

October 2012, Volume 112 Number 10 , p 12 - 12
[FREE]

Author

Sandy Summers MSN, MPH, RN

Abstract

I love Elizabeth H. Winslow's Viewpoint ("We Silence Our Profession When We Fail to Identify Ourselves as Nurses," August) about making it clearer to readers that the health information they're reading is coming from a nurse.When health information is provided by someone identified only as a PhD or by a credential not specific to nursing, the reader has no way of knowing whether or not the expert is a nurse, and this works against nursing. People assume the expert isn't a nurse unless they're told that she or he is, because the media has long stereotyped nurses as unskilled workers and handmaidens-not as educated health experts working at the forefront of modern health care who have much to teach the public.For more than a decade, we've been urging our readers at The Truth About Nursing (www.truthaboutnursing.org ) to weave their nursing status into the media they create. Have they listened? Not enough, apparently[horizontal ellipsis]Get up, stand up, nurses!Sandy Summers, MSN, MPH, RNBaltimore,

I love Elizabeth H. Winslow's Viewpoint ("We Silence Our Profession When We Fail to Identify Ourselves as Nurses," August) about making it clearer to readers that the health information they're reading is coming from a nurse.

When health information is provided by someone identified only as a PhD or by a credential not specific to nursing, the reader has no way of knowing whether or not the expert is a nurse, and this works against nursing. People assume the expert isn't a nurse unless they're told that she or he is, because the media has long stereotyped nurses as unskilled workers and handmaidens-not as educated health experts working at the forefront of modern health care who have much to teach the public.

For more than a decade, we've been urging our readers at The Truth About Nursing (http://www.truthaboutnursing.org) to weave their nursing status into the media they create. Have they listened? Not enough, apparently[horizontal ellipsis]